


REM

by aderyn



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: 221B Ficlet, Wish Fulfillment, semi-lucid dreaming, sleep science
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-17
Updated: 2013-01-17
Packaged: 2017-11-25 21:23:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/643101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aderyn/pseuds/aderyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Other people's dreams are (tedious, Freudian.)</p>
<p>Sherlock dreams different.</p>
            </blockquote>





	REM

**Author's Note:**

> For [Professorfangirl](http://archiveofourown.org/users/lizeckhart/pseuds/professorfangirl) and [Songster](http://songstersmiscellany.tumblr.com/) and all the nightbird insomniacs.

_Physics says:_ _go to sleep. Of course_  
 _you’re tired. Every atom in you_  
 _has been dancing the shimmy in silver shoes_  
 _nonstop from mitosis to now.—Albert Goldbarth, “The Sciences Sing a Lullabye”_

Other people's dreams are (tedious, Freudian.)

Sherlock never dreams about monuments and tunnels and steeples and trains; well, sometimes he dreams about aqueducts, bridges and steeples and tunnels and trains, the culverts of London he's left long ago.  
  
He dreams the map. The Knowledge that is knowledge and the knowledge that is his. He'd crack it, rework it with lead and gold, this _carta_ , this dream. The knot of the streets and the helix of the hippocampus. His knife hand, John's elbow, the fist-flattened heart of Marylebone.  
  
He dreams in notations that correspond, a chord for a thoroughfare, a fermata; the city and its crimes and the canon of its atoms.  
  
He doesn't dream about that. He's got a handful of ash. He’s got handful of hair he recognizes. He has a handful of John's coat, in an entry, in an alley. He has handful of John's hair and it blows away fine as the _dent-de-lion_ (soot ,mandibles, genetic drift, codes, the hot draw of the organic compound.)  
  
The loci are different here. The genius is different. He’s always so tired.  
  
He shuts his eyes, hits REM so fast, drops straight to the bottom, stops, blinks where John looks back at him though the six carbons of benzene, though the bright brace of D major, says, _I'd love you, dreamer; dreamer, beware._

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to [PFG](http://archiveofourown.org/users/lizeckhart/pseuds/professorfangirl) for the Albert Goldbarth, and for keeping counsel.
> 
> [The Knowledge, London cabbies, and the hippocampus](http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2011/12/08/acquiring-the-knowledge-changes-the-brains-of-london-cab-drivers/).  
> [The Neuroscience of Dreaming](http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2006/12/19/the-neuroscience-of-dreaming/).  
> [The (fist-flattened) heart of Marylebone](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%20File:Greater_London_UK_location_map_2.svg).


End file.
